THE REINCARNATION OF PETER PROUD 1975

Warning: Spoiler Alert. This is a critical essay, not a review, so key plot points are revealed for the purpose of discussion.

The success of The Exorcist (1973) left Hollywood scrambling to grab up the rights to any and all novels even remotely related to the occult and the supernatural. Having exhausted the whole demonic possession thing, and with indestructible serial killers still a few years off, studios—spurred on by the burgeoning '70s New Age movement and Me-Generation interest in navel-gazing mysticism—turned to the relatively benign philosophy of reincarnation as the next hoped-for trend in cinema scares.

Employing the same, questioning, nosy-parker tact in its ad copy as The Reincarnation of Peter Proud ("Suppose you knew who you had been in a previous life. What Then?"),  1977's Audrey Rose was a classier, pedigreed big studio reincarnation release, but due to a preposterous plot, it too fared poorly at the boxoffice

With its case-history title reminiscent of 1972s The Possession of Joel Delaney, The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, a popular 1973 supernatural suspense novel by TV-writer Max Ehrlich (Star Trek, The Untouchables, Suspense) was snapped up by Bing Crosby Productions (of all things) to be made into a film for release in 1975. This independent television production company (responsible for Ben Casey and Hogan’s Heroes) had recently branched out into motion pictures and enjoyed a string of sleeper successes with the low-budget thrillers Willard (1971), You’ll Like My Mother (1972), and the redneck vigilante opus Walking Tall (1973).

The Reincarnation of Peter Proud was BCPs ambitious move into the mainstream. Ehrlich was hired to adapt his book for the screenplay (misstep #1), and directing chores were handed over (promisingly) to Hollywood vet and Hitchcock fan, J. Lee Thompson. Thompson had been nominated for an Academy Award for The Guns of Navarone back in 1961, but what augured well for Peter Proud was his direction of the intense thriller Cape Fear (1962). He was also the director of the marvelously atmospheric but little-seen suspense drama Return from the Ashes in 1965. 

But alas, in order for one to consider the hiring of this 60-year-old director a boon to the making of The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, one has to conveniently overlook the TV-level mediocrity of his more recent output. Specifically, the unexceptional Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) and Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973). Still, there was always the lure of the film’s talented and attractive cast; no top-tier A-listers, but a definite step-up from the unknowns and TV-Q talent usually associated with BCP films. And all at intriguingly varied stages of stardom/relevance in their respective careers.

Cast in the title role was Michael Sarrazin, whose career had stumbled a bit after the brilliant They Shoot Horses,Don’t They?  (1969), but things appeared to be on the upswing, what with landing this role after co-starring opposite Barbra Streisand in For Pete’s Sake (1974). 

Michael Sarrazin as Peter Proud

Former Cover Girl model Jennifer O’Neill, who’d made such a splash as the dream girl in 1971s The Summer ’42, was perilously close to having Hollywood invoke its unspoken three-flops-you’re-out law (Such Good Friends, The Carey Treatment, Lady Ice) when cast as the male fantasy-object in The Reincarnation of Peter Proud. Her prominent billing, despite making her entrance nearly 60 minutes into the film, a fair indication that her leading lady marquee gold hadn’t completely tarnished.

Jennifer O'Neill as Ann Curtis

Margot Kidder, still three years away from global superstardom as Lois Lane in Superman: The Movie (1978), was still something of a promising up-and-comer after her attention-getting turn in Brian DePalma’s cult hit Sisters (1973). Small but memorable turns in Black Christmas (1974) and The Great Waldo Pepper (1975) gave the uniqueness of her role in The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (coeval costars Kidder & O'Neill play mother and daughter) an emerging star-of-tomorrow feel.

Margot Kidder as Marcia Curtis

Rounding out this feminine trifecta of talent was Cornelia Sharpe, a name sure to inspire a lot of “Who?” these days, but back in the ‘70s she was the new blonde on the block; heavily touted in the press for her Faye Dunaway cheekbones (minus the acting chops), and appealing malleability in any number of underwritten “girlfriend” roles of the sort so prevalent during the male-dominated decade (most famously, Serpico-1973). Sharpe’s part in The Reincarnation of Peter Proud doesn’t really buck this trend, her presence in the largely female cast merely adding to the hopeful speculation that the R-rated suspenser was going to have a sizable overlay of ticket-selling sex and nudity with its supernatural shocks.

Cornelia Sharpe as Nora Hayes

Heterosexually speaking, if Peter Proud’s prominently publicized passel of pulchritudinous performers primed potential patrons with the prospect of a little T&A with their ESP; the film’s provocatively homoerotic poster art worked wonders for drawing the attention of the gay contingent. 

The memorable ad campaign and sole identifying graphic for the promotion of The Reincarnation of Peter Proud was this lava-lamp soaked image of muscled, heavily-striated, and (most significantly) naked actor/model Tony Stephano screaming in pain after (as we come to learn) being hit in the schnuts with a wooden boat oar. A fashion model for Givenchy seen frequently on the pages of GQ magazine at the time, Stephano makes his film debut in The Reincarnation of Peter Proud as Jeff Curtis, Peter Proud's earlier, not-so-nice incarnation.
A common promotional practice of the day was for a film with a racy theme to appear in the pages of Playboy magazine or similar skin rag as part of an advance-publicity pictorial (my eyes still burn from the sight of a naked Robert Culp in the Penthouse magazine pictorial for the forgotten 1973 haunted house flick, A Name for Evil). However, in the age of Women's Lib, Playgirl magazine, and the advent of equal-opportunity flesh-peddling, two months before the release of The Reincarnation of Peter Proud Stephano promoted the film and his chiseled assets by gracing the cover and centerfold spread of the short-lived Foxylady magazine (below, albeit sans the oar - that's just my addition in the twin interests of providing modesty and a helpful visual-aid for those who haven't seen the film).  

I’ve no idea of the production budget for The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (it has that underpopulated, TV-movie look, so my guess is minimal) but the impact its publicity machine had on me was considerable. Intriguing radio and TV spots (“Who are you Peter Proud?”); a paperback book tie-in; pervasive newspaper ads; and an R-rating which hinted at the possibility of a return to Exorcist-style shake-‘em-up explicit horror (back then I considered the recently-released PG-rated The Stepford Wives far too tame) ‒ I was stoked.

All except for two red flags:

1. It didn't bode well for the quality of The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (also known hereafter as TROPP) that it was being distributed through American International Pictures; the self-proclaimed “Woolworth’s of the movie industry” known for exploitation cheapies and bungling its rare stabs at legitimacy (Merchant/Ivory’s The Wild Party- 1975).

2. TROPP was slated to open at the movie theater where I worked. By rights, this news should have thrilled me to the core, but the theater where I was employed as an usher, The Alhambra Theater on Polk Street in San Francisco, was the sister-theater to the ritzier Regency Cinema on Van Ness. Both were first-run theaters, but the mid-town Regency got all the anticipated sure-fire hits while the Alhambra (viewed as a neighborhood theater) was given the leftovers. There was the occasional miscalculation (like when Jaws was sneak previewed there and Martin Scorsese’s sleeper hit Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore opened to consistently, wholly unexpected, sold-out business), but for the most part, if the Alhambra got it, industry buzz on the film tended to be mild.

Nora (described in the film's press material as a "sensuous grad student") attempts
to awaken Peter -as sensually as she can, I suspect- from one of his violent recurring nightmares. 

The topic of reincarnation hasn’t had a particularly good track record on film. Whether played for smarmy laughs (Goodbye Charlie -1964), set to music (On a Clear Day You Can See Forever -1970), or staged as romantic melodrama (Dead Again - 1991); reincarnation may intrigue in real-life, but in the assumed identity, anything can happen, make-believe world of film, it has credibility issues.

Peter Proud (Sarrazin), a University of California Professor of Anthropology, is plagued by vivid recurring dreams he comes to learn are actually past-life memories. In his dreams, he is inhabiting the body of another man—a man who is murdered by an unknown woman while he swims in an icy lake. Curiosity turns to obsession as Proud ventures to Springfield, Massachusetts, the city in his dreams, on a quest to discover who he was in an earlier life and to unearth the circumstances surrounding his violent death.

With the help of old newspapers and his own dream-recognition of specific locations, Proud uncovers evidence that he once existed as Jeff Cutis (Stephano), a former war hero married unhappily to banker’s daughter Marcia Buckley (Kidder). Three months after the birth of their daughter Ann, Jeff was found dead in the local lake, cause of death unknown. Only it isn’t—not for Peter Proud. He knows that Jeff was an abusive husband and serial womanizer killed by his wife that cold dark night out on the lake 35 years ago.

Getting To Know You

Intrigued by the thought of meeting both the wife and daughter of his former self, Proud rather recklessly insinuates himself into the lives of the now-grown Ann (O'Neill)--a sweet-natured divorcee with sad eyes--and 60-year-old widow Marica, the pretty, smiling brunette in his dreams who's matured into something of a morose, guilt-ridden sot.

Before long, Proud’s fevered obsession with his past life is supplanted by a desire to build a future of his own as he finds himself falling in love with Ann, who is, metaphysically speaking, his daughter. Meanwhile, Proud’s subconscious similarities to her late husband arouse mounting suspicions (and a few other things) in Marcia, leading to a violent reenactment of a past tragedy that was perhaps always fated to be.

With its not-uninteresting premise, combining elements of the psychological suspense film with the supernatural thriller and crime/detective mystery; The Reincarnation of Peter Proud had the potential to mine some of the same dreamy, eerily perverse terrain of erotic fixation as Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) or Brian De Palma’s 1977 Obsession. Unfortunately, Ehrlich’s plot-driven, exposition-heavy script and Thompson’s lacking-in-nuance, indifferent direction give TROPP the feel of a dramatically compelling TV Movie of the Week. With lots of nudity.

What Did I Have That I Don't Have?

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM 
In a film as promising, but ultimately lacking, as The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, it’s difficult to pinpoint just where, among so many gross miscalculations, things went most wrong. But for me, problems with the script seemed evident from the film’s first frames. Max Ehrlich (often taking sizable chunks of dialog from his novel) shows no flair for the rhythms and tones of natural conversation. Revealing his TV-based roots, nearly every word spoken is designed either to propel the plot forward or provide expository information.

Character development (helpful in getting audiences invested in the emotional stakes behind Proud’s obsessive quest) takes a backseat to the writer’s efforts to propel the story forward along its inexorable path. The result is what often befalls rote disaster films and poorly-made horror movies: the characters’ actions and motivations are solely in service of plot machinations and rarely seem to emanate from personality or normal human behavior patterns.

After driving throughout Massachusetts in search of the unknown city he sees in his dreams,
Peter finally comes upon a recognizable landmark

For example: sure, the whole reincarnation angle of the plot is known to the audience before the film even begins, but Ehrlich's overdetermined script never allows the characters to consider any other explanations for Peter's strange behavior (like demonic possession or schizophrenia, for example). Once it's suggested that reincarnation is behind Proud speaking in another man’s voice, suffering phantom pain attacks, and being plagued by detailed visions of a life imagined or remembered, the abrupt and unquestioning acceptance of that theory by everyone turns what could have been a mysterious journey of discovery into a protracted lecture on New Age mysticism. In short, a more creative adapter of the material might have strived to make the film's title potentially ambiguous, with Peter Proud a perhaps unreliable narrator misleading the viewer (something Roman Polanski did beautifully with the literal-minded novel that became his ambiguous screen adaptation of Rosemary's Baby).

The premise of The Reincarnation of Peter Proud is already fairly fascinating fodder for a suspense thriller, I just wish someone had thought it worth the effort to supplement the story with more fleshed-out characterizations.

In the novel, the whole metaphysical incest angle is skirted by having Peter remain chastely in love with Ann. The film controversially has Peter and Ann consummate their love in a sequence intercut with shots of Ann's mother and father (uh...Peter, sort of) making love on the same spot 35 years hence.

PERFORMANCES

Which brings up the film's other problem. In spite of what I might have hoped for in the way of mainstream seriousness from the ads and advance publicity, The Reincarnation of Peter Proud is an exploitation movie, and as such, the sensational aspects of the plot are the film’s real stars.

Still, that doesn’t excuse what passes for acting by a large portion of the film’s cast. Michael Sarrazin, always a rather likable but vague screen presence (which is perhaps why the amorphous Robert of They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? remained the most memorable work of his career) fails to capture any of the dark nuances of a character fixated on knowing his former self, yet willing to have sex with the daughter of the man he knows he once was.

The appealing Jennifer O’Neill is mostly cast and used for her beauty and blank-slate personality (she’s like Mary-Ann on Gilligan’s Island; the perfect, non-threatening, girlfriend male fantasy).

Mother and Child Reunion

Margot Kidder, in what might be called a double role (although her 1940’s persona is sliced and diced to snippets) gives the film’s best performance. Although never once physically convincing as a 60-year-old woman (makeup is a little too junior college theater dept.), Kidder emotionally inhabits her character in a way that renders realistic the toll taken on a broken woman weary from carrying around a burdensome secret for too many years. Her scenes with same-age O'Neill (both 26) are particularly interesting to watch.

Debralee Scott as Suzy
Scott's bit role as a helpful teen (almost all of her dialogue is exposition) cements the film in the 1970s. Debralee Scott seemed to be all over the place during the decade, memorable as Louise Lasser's sister in TVs Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Donna Pescow's sister on Angie, and as a regular on Welcome Back, Kotter. Scott passed away in 2005, but these days she's highly visible on the Buzzr network on several game shows. Should it ever show up on YouTube, I recommend you catch her in the 1973 TV movie A Summer Without Boys.

Worst performance is an overcrowded category finds the lovely but tone-deaf Cornelia Sharpe (she sounds as though she learned her dialog phonetically) outpacing both pipe-smoking parapsychologist Paul Hecht (saying his lines and hitting his marks without projecting much through that forest of hair on his face), and the ever-nude Tony Stephano, whose Arrow Collar Man profile is perfect for the era, but whose voice I suspect is dubbed.

If you didn't grow up in the hair-helmet '70s, you're forgiven for assuming actor Paul Hecht
 (as parapsychologist/sleep-researcher Samuel Goodman)
 is wearing one of these contemporary crochet bearded-beanies 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
The Reincarnation of Peter Proud sought to distinguish itself in the horror/supernatural movie market by being explicit, but not in the head-spinning, vomit-spewing way. TROPP promoted itself as an erotic thriller, and its many controversial scenes were geared for maximum shock effect.

Marcia masturbates recalling the sexual assault she suffered at the hands of her late husband

A tiresome '70s trope (Peckinpah's Straw Dogs) was the rape that morphs into sex

Reflecting perhaps the film's lack of a cohesive point of view, Peter's metaphysically incestual relationship with Ann is depicted in romantic terms. If Peter does indeed believe he's the reincarnation of Ann's father, his taking the relationship to a physical level comes off as irresponsible at best, amoral at worst.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

The Reincarnation of Peter Proud is one of those curious movies from my past where, after the initial disappointment of unrealized potential has settled (taking years to do so), nostalgia turns flaws into assets, and the film’s ability to perfectly evoke a particular time and place overrides its general weakness.

I can’t fully separate my reaction to The Reincarnation of Peter Proud from my nostalgic memories of my life in 1975. Nor do I want to. TROPP is, in my eyes, a film not wholly successful as either an erotic thriller or supernatural suspenser; yet it can't be denied that the film still manages to strike a chord with those who were of a certain age when they saw it (adolescent to late teens). The film obviously works on some level for me, perhaps one better suited to a Night Gallery or Twilight Zone episode, but its minor effectiveness can't be denied..
There’s plenty of ‘70s weirdness about it, which I like, but it suffers because it lacks the kind of crazy you find in the dark corners of the works of Hitchcock, Polanski, and other directors with demons they use film to exorcize. And a movie as offbeat as this NEEDS that kind of crazy.

One of the film's more eerily effective scenes is when Peter accompanies Ann to the convalescent home to visit her paternal grandmother. The woman, who hasn't spoken or acknowledged another person for years, suddenly sees Peter and recognizes her son, Jeffrey.

The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, with its pedestrian direction and bland cinematography (surprising given that its cinematographer is Victor J. Kemper, the man who shot Xanadu and the stylish Eyes of Laura Mars) flattens out what really is a pretty loopy yarn that could have been an eerily sexy, metaphysical mind-bender. It’s not the film it could have been, but when I look at it now, I find myself increasingly grateful to it for being what it is.

Everything about its look just screams 1975 (the fashions, color scheme, washed-out appearance), as does its sober approach to the material (the dead-serious attitude about reincarnation is naively preachy), and the slightly-off feeling of the performances (on par with what you’d see on '70s TV or in big-screen genre films like Earthquake).

So I look at The Reincarnation of Peter Proud and marvel at the many things mainstream movies wouldn’t think of trying to get away with today. I poke fun at the risible dialog and plot contrivances, the poky acting, and the dated milieu. But I also allow myself to be taken back to my youth by the abstract, almost metaphysical notion that the enjoyment derived from certain movies is often untethered to the particulars of said film’s quality, but rather, wholly connected to the nostalgic pleasure to be found in (safely) revisiting one's past.

Copyright © Ken Anderson 2009 - 2016

X, Y & ZEE 1972

Warning: Spoiler Alert. This is a critical essay, not a review, so plot points are revealed for the purpose of discussion.

She's at that awkward age. Seventies-era Elizabeth Taylor, that is. Starting out as an uncommonly pretty child actress, Taylor grew into a breathtakingly beautiful movie star who became known (with the assistance of Eddie Fisher, Richard Burton, and "le scandale") as a world-class homewrecker and tabloid darling. Over time came the respect and legitimacy of two Academy Award wins (Butterfield 8, Who'sAfraid of Virginia Woolf?), too soon supplanted by the undesired notoriety of being the star of several costly, eccentric flops. Come the '70s, Taylor seemed to settle into a kind of teetering-on-the-edge-of-irrelevance fame that cast her as the walking embodiment of movie star excess. A symbol of fishbowl-celebrity victimization and the near-obsessive object of keyhole journalism. She was a public figure noted more for her jewels, illnesses, and fluctuating waistline than for her talent as an actress.

Elizabeth Taylor as Zee Blakeley

Michael Caine as Robert Blakeley

Susannah York as Stella 

I was 15 in 1972, and had you asked me then to name an actress, I would have said Glenda Jackson, Jane Fonda, or Faye Dunaway. If you'd asked me to name a movie star, in a heartbeat, I'd have said Elizabeth Taylor. She was in a different category altogether. Why? Certainly not because I was so familiar with her work. No, at age fifteen, I had only seen Taylor in a couple of movies on The Late Late Show, and on the big screen, only Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Secret Ceremony. The reason Elizabeth Taylor represented and defined movie stardom for me was that, for as long as I could remember and as far back as memory served, there had not been a single month in the entirety of my childhood that didn't find Elizabeth Taylor's face gracing the cover of a magazine, newspaper, or scandal-sheet. She was famous to me before I even knew what famous was.

But by 1972, Elizabeth Taylor had become an in-betweener. An eminent member of old-guard Hollywood too young to be nostalgically "hip" like Alexis Smith and Ruby Keeler (both of whom enjoyed brief career resurgences on Broadway in 1971: Follies and No, No Nanette, respectively); too big a star to go the put-out-to-pasture, weekly TV series route taken by Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, and Shirley MacLaine (all starring in short-lived TV shows during the 1971-1972 season); and yet too old to be taken seriously in the "New Hollywood" which cast her  (preposterously) as a mini-skirted Las Vegas showgirl(!) carrying on an affair with 5-years-younger Warren Beatty in The Only Game in Town (1970). 

Granted far too little screen time (but making the most of it in a see-through frock),
the fabulous Margaret Leighton plays a party-giving socialite named Gladys.
She could be the prototype for Ab Fab's Patsy

One of Taylor's most significant drawbacks was that she still looked like a movie star in an era that had turned its attention to gritty naturalism and actors who looked like regular folks. In a time when roles were written for people who looked like Karen Black, Elliot Gould, and Dustin Hoffman, Elizabeth Taylor stood out for all the wrong reasons. A de-glamorized Taylor tended to look matronly (something both her fans and detractors never let her forget). Yet at the same time, an in-step-with-the-times Taylor (she was only 38 when X, Y & Zee began filming) came across like a trying-too-hard fashion trainwreck (something evident in most every frame of X, Y & Zee).

Seventies youth-oriented fashions were unique in that they seemed to come with built-in lie-detectors; they invariably made those who sought to appropriate the look of the "now" generation look infinitely older, not younger. Elizabeth Taylor's short stature and curvy figure (so fetching in the hourglass silhouettes of the '50s and '60s) was ill-served by the bright colors and form-fitting cut of mod clothes and hippie chic. When she wasn't looking like a Technicolor butterfly in blowsy caftans and height-reducing ponchos, she was encased and cocooned in trendy synthetics that appeared as uncomfortable as they were unflattering. 

As for her film career: the all-encompassing scope of Taylor's tabloid notoriety, a spate of ill-advised self-referential movie roles (audiences treated every Taylor/Burton film pairing as a dramatized glimpse into the couple's real life), and stunt-like TV guest appearances (in the daytime soap All My Children and on Lucille Ball's sitcom Here's Lucy—both in 1970), all conspired to make it next to impossible for audiences to accept her in a movie as anybody but herself.

What was a contemporary cinema demi-goddess to do?

Well, one solution – especially if one was as in need of a hit as Taylor at the time—was to give 'em what they wanted. And to a large degree, that's precisely what X, Y & Zee does. Author Edna O'Brien's original screenplay about a toxic romantic triangle among London's tony set (originally titled Zee & Co.) is an acerbic black comedy-drama that appears to have been whittled and shaped to suit the talents and persona of its star. (O'Brien contends that as many as four writers tinkered with her script...even changing her original ending - reportedly involving a ménage à trois - to a lesbian conquest.)

Elizabeth Taylor portrays Zee Blakeley, the coarse, overdressed vulgarian wife of shout-talk architect Robert Blakeley (Michael Caine). Theirs is a sophisticated open marriage. A decidedly rocky one, however, sustained by constant bickering, wicked parry and thrust verbal matches, and relentless game-playing of the sexual one-upmanship sort. This dysfunctional breakup-to-makeup cycle is disrupted when Robert meets and instantly falls in love with the serene Stella (the lovely Susannah York sporting the most astoundingly-constructed 70s shag), a widowed dress designer with twin boys and a fashion boutique named...appropriately enough...Kaftan.

As the younger "other woman" who has caught both Robert's eye and exceedingly fickle heart, Stella exudes such intelligence and sensitivity that it's rather difficult to understand what she sees in the lizard-eyed lothario...beyond, perhaps, the flattery of the ardency of his pursuit. As for Robert, it's clear Stella represents an opportunity for a little peace and quiet, and a little less fashion eye-strain.

"I think she looks like a bag of bones."
Zee and best friend Gordon (John Standing) size up the competition

I can only speculate that what ensues was initially intended to be a three-pronged war of wills in which everyone's desires are ultimately revealed to be selfish and motivated by rescue, dependency, or escape. However, what is actually served up is a one-woman battle and full-on frontal assault waged by Zee against Robert and Stella (both hopelessly outmatched) as she resorts to every trick in the book—and a few no one had yet dared think of—to keep her man and assure that things remain as they are.

Screenwriter O'Brien may have exhausted the whole "modern marriage under stress" topic in 1969's more dramatically satisfying Three Into Two Won't Go (in which Rod Steiger's uncooked pastry dough countenance strains credibility as the fought-over commodity in a romantic triangle featuring real-life wife Claire Bloom, and Judy Geeson). A similar tone of sophisticated cynicism and candor is strived for in X, Y & Zee, but only the occasional spark note is ever actually hit. No problem, for Taylor & Co. seem content to coast on personality and fireworks, capitalizing on and exploiting every ounce of the script's self-referential humor and second-hand Albee melodrama.

The result: Elizabeth Taylor's Zee, balancing on the brink of self-parody and frequently leaping headlong into camp, is less a character than a burlesque amalgam of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 's Martha; Leonora, the scatterbrained chatterbox from Reflections in a Golden Eye; the claws-out Maggie from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; and snatch-and-grab bits culled from years of Taylor's press clippings.

Taylor makes knowing, self-aware jokes about her weight-

 Zee: "Real men don't like skinny women. They only think they do because they're supposed to look better in clothes. But what happens when the clothes come off, and you climb between the sheets on a cold winter night? Then they like to know they're with a real woman."

Taylor turns well-known critical barbs into self-directed comedy-
Robert: "She (Stella) suggests you open a fish store."

Taylor indulges her well-documented bawdy sense of humor-
Zee: "Frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a shit!"

Taylor reprises Maggie the Cat-

Zee: (On the phone to Stella) "Is my husband in your skinny, chicken-like arms?"

Taylor reprises Virginia Woolf's Martha- 

Zee: "Come back here, you! I haven't dismissed you yet!"

And, of course, with each scene of Taylor and Caine whaling on and wailing at one another between bouts of heated make-up sex, the tumultuous real-life Taylor/Burton union (which had about two more years to go) is evoked, and (the audience hopes) reenacted.

Taylor, while balancing an enormous mane of Medusa hair, drowning in a fashion parade of gaudy, sail-like caftans, and risking violet eye-shadow poisoning, gives a performance that is by turns unsubtle, nuanced, hilarious, knowing, touching, and assured 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

I imagine that the mental calisthenics a writer must perform in order to come up with something new to say about the romantic triangle are considerable. Edna O'Brien's tack seems to be to examine what binds people together in an atmosphere of unbridled license. The Beautiful People populating X, Y & Zee are a rarefied set. Unlike the penniless, free-love hippies espousing freedom and "doing your own thing" in the atmosphere of the sexual revolution, the hedonistic individuals at the center of the film have both the wealth and autonomy to be truly free. And therein lies the problem.

Without the need to be tethered or tied to anyone, the whole idea of marriage and morality becomes confoundingly fluid. No one can be accused of cheating because cheating first presumes the existence of rules. And from what little we glean from this couple's past (Zee can't have children and pets die on them with tragic regularity), like Albee's George and Martha, game-playing replaced rules for Zee and Robert long ago.

The introduction of Stella into the middle of this duo is significant. Stella, unlike Zee, is a working woman, and Robert, a self-made man, is wealthy but proud of his humble beginnings. Stella—calm in the face of Zee's excitability, soft-spoken to Zee's shrillness—also wears around her neck a Quran case amulet (an Islamic protective talisman which plays an important but subtle role in the film's conclusion) suggesting a spirituality and connection to something outside of herself…another attribute lacking in Zee. Add to this the fact that Stella also has two children with whom Robert immediately develops a rapport, and we come to understand why Zee recognizes in Stella, no ordinary rival.

Both Susannah York and Michael Caine give noteworthy performances

This is the core conflict in X, Y & Zee, and while not earth-shatteringly profound stuff, it makes for compelling human drama and (in the film's quieter moments) is exceptionally well-played by the cast

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Alas, quiet moments in X, Y & Zee are pretty hard to come by. As directed by Brian G. Hutton (Night Watch) X, Y & Zee is a crudely funny, visually flashy, magnificently photographed, and exceedingly noisy movie. Perhaps in an effort to better fashion O'Brien's 3-character story into a star vehicle, X, Y & Zee not only tells the story from Zee's perspective (which I can understand), but allows Zee's aesthetics (loud music, loud clothing, and shrieking whenever possible) to become the film's defining motif. 

I'm aware that the '70s presents its own unique challenges if one's intention is to depict a character as vulgar and coarse, and it's a great deal of campy fun having Elizabeth Taylor run full-throttle diva roughshod over every and all; but it does tend to unbalance the narrative, making it difficult for the dramatic sequences to hit their stride. As a huge fan of Mike Nichols' poorly-received 2004 comedy-drama Closer (about two sets of couples endlessly circling one another), I think X, Y & Zee could have benefited from a similarly deft balancing of the serio with the comic.

PERFORMANCES

As stated in previous posts, my respect for and appreciation of Elizabeth Taylor was rather late in coming, making me wonder what I would have made of  X, Y & Zee had I seen it when it was released to theaters in January of 1972. Because it plays so strongly to what I once thought were her weaknesses (her voice, her sometimes too-knowing camp appeal) I don't think I would have rated it very highly. 

Today is a different story. Maybe it's my own age (I'm 20 years older than Taylor in this film), maybe it's nostalgia for the era (the '70's never looked more Austin Powers-like), and most definitely it's the dawning awareness that her like is nowhere to be found on movie screens today; but I think Taylor is damn good in this movie. As funny as she is in the first part (a broad performance not likely to win over detractors) she truly shines and is quite moving in the second half. I've seen X, Y and Zee several times, and while I find it to be uneven (I can understand Edna O'Brien's dissatisfaction with the script) I can't deny that I have - to quote the poster - an absolute ball watching it. 

In Richard Burton's published diary, he wrote of how there was a genuine belief on his part that X, Y and Zee would be the much-needed boxoffice hit for Elizabeth. Alas, it proved to be just the latest in a lengthening string of underperforming films that came to characterize her latter-day career. Taylor never stopped being a star, but she never again rose to the heights of her '60s film popularity. 

I especially like Susannah York. Her character doesn't entirely make sense to me, but York's performance is so natural and seems to come from a place of clear understanding on her part, I feel I'm always struggling to get up to speed. She draws me into her character in search of what I'm positive I'm missing. The scenes between Taylor and York are my favorites. The hospital scene being a real standout...both are just tremendously affecting together. In the buddy-film atmosphere of the '70s, not many big female stars were cast opposite other women, and I forever bemoan what was potentially lost in not having any women's films comparable to the pairings of Redford and Newman.

X, Y and Zee's meta credentials don't stop with allusions to Taylor's previous roles as overbearing shrews. Susannah York's casting (her part was said to have first been offered to Julie Christie) harkens back to her controversial role in 1968s The Killing of Sister George

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Couldn't sign off on X, Y and Zee without commenting on two non-Elizabeth Taylor-related favorite things about the film. One is the luminous cinematography of Billy Williams (Women in Love, Night Watch). Maybe it's the pristine quality of the DVD, but I never noticed before how burnished everything (and everyone) looks. The garish '70s decor and fashions pop off the screen creating a glitzy world of numbing sensual overkill.

X, Y and Zee goes for every "sophisticated" and "adult" credit it can get by having two featured gay characters. Michael Cashman is Gavin, an employee at Stella's shop. Cashman, whose character Zee mordantly describes as a "poncy little fag" is, in real life, currently a member of British Parliament and the Labour Party's special envoy on LGBT issues worldwide. So shove it, Zee!  

Second is the film's musical theme, the eloquent ballad "Going in Circles" by Ted Myers & Jaianada. The lovely lyrical version played under the film's opening credits sets the tone for a movie that doesn't arrive until about 45 minutes in. And a terrific vocal version is heard over the closing credits, but the singer's identity is hard to reliably confirm. 

Internet sources cite Three Dog Night, but they recorded a cover version on an album that sounds nothing like the one in the film. Another source claims the vocalist is Richard (Harry) Podolor, the manager of Three Dog Night. Further confusing the issue, a friend who claims to have seen the film when it was initially released says that Three Dog Night sang over the closing credits originally, but when the film came to VHS and DVD they replaced their version (copyright issues?) with the one we now hear (who that is I still don't know). In any event, it's a graceful song and curiously ideal for this not-very well-regarded little film that has become one of my favorite Elizabeth Taylor vehicles.

Zee: "He loves his little games. Do you play?"

Stella: "I'm afraid I don't."

Zee: "Nor do I."

BONUS MATERIAL

As a possible solution to the above quandary, I found this online poster image containing a sticker promoting Three Dog Night singing "Going in Circles" in the film. (click on poster to enlarge)

One of my favorite Elizabeth Taylor clips: Taylor presenting at the 1981 Tony Awards. She's really adorable and infectiously hilarious.

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2016

THE SHOW BEGAN ON THE SIDEWALK: TOP 20 Favorite Movie Posters

The Last Drive In

This essay is dedicated to Phil Gips and the late Stephen O. Frankfurt. Two legendary trailblazers in the field of motion picture advertising / marketing who collaborated on some of the most innovative and enduring campaigns and poster designs of all time.

I’ve loved movie posters and have been fascinated by the marketing side of the motion picture business for as long as I can remember. One of my earliest movie ad memories is of being about 8 or 9 years-old sitting in the back of the family station wagon and being thunderstruck as we drive by a naked man, three-stories-high and draped halfway around the side of a building.
What I saw as a wraparound billboard above a major movie theater advertising The Bible, John Huston's 1966 John Huston epic which prominently featured a nude Michael Parks (as Adam at the moment of creation, rising out of the dust of the earth with a strategically raised knee) in all its advertising.

This New York mega-billboard is similar to the one I recall gracing a movie palace in
 Denver, Colorado in 1966

When my sisters and I were small, my mother used to take us downtown with her when she went shopping on Saturdays. Back then, all the big department stores were along San Francisco’s Market Street, which was also the site of scores of those big, old-fashioned movie palaces. Grabbing the pedestrian's eye was the goal of these theaters, so a full day of shopping invariably turned into an impromptu art walk centered around some of the most arresting graphic design and illustration imaginable. I was forever lagging behind distractedly staring at one beckoning movie poster after another, begging for brief detours through the open outdoor theater lobbies, enthralled by the glass display cases overflowing with posters, stills, and lobby cards advertising current features and coming attractions.

My first job: usher at the Alhambra Theater on Polk Street in S.F.
Tuesdays were my favorite days because I got to change the marquees and put up the poster displays. 
Can't even tell you what a kick it was getting to see the publicity materials and pressbooks. 
Occasionally, the manager would gift me with a poster for a film I particularly liked (Night Moves)
or ones National Screen Service wouldn't miss (The Happy Hooker)

On Sunday mornings, when other more well-adjusted kids clamored for the expanded color comics in the newspaper, I hogged the San Francisco Chronicle’s entertainment pages (called DateBook, but due to the distinctive color of the paper, known to us locals as “the pink section”). I relished poring over the many movie ads, and even kept a clippings scrapbook of those of my favorites.

This was the late '60s, so pop-art poster stores (part head-shop, part record store) proliferated in the Haight-Ashbury district where we lived. Occasionally my older sister would allow me to tag along when she’d go to these teen hangouts where they sold t-shirts, candles, blacklight posters, and all manner of hippie-influenced, pop-culture novelties. This was at the start of the youth wave in nostalgia and camp, and a company known as Personality Posters Mfg Co. specialized in blow-up portraits of classic Hollywood stars. My sister's room was full of one-dollar posters of Bogart, Monroe, Fields, Harlow, and Gable. As a gift she bought me twin posters of Liz Taylor and Richard Burton in Taming of the Shrew, and with my own money I bought poster #30 from the chart below: Peter Fonda as Captain America astride his Easy Rider chopper- a BW image highlighted with yellow-tinted glasses and Old Glory gas tank and helmet. Too groovy for words!

Later, when we moved across the bay to Berkeley and I was old enough to walk to and from school alone; my after-school route was always a good half-hour longer and more serpentine than it needed to be, for it was my habit to stroll by and malinger in front of the many movie theaters peppering the UC Berkeley campus streets leading home.

In the days before 24-hour entertainment reporting and minute-by-minute behind-the-scenes production updates, movie posters were pretty much the means by which I first came to know of any of the films that would go on to become my favorites. Because this was when TV news was actually about the news (not the corporate subsidiary cross-promotion disguised as news we have today), I knew nothing about the movies beforehand and had to rely on these posters to give me an inkling of what was in store.
Sure, I looked at movie magazines (with names like Movie Mirror, Modern Screen, or my personal fave, Rona Barrett’s Hollywood), but they were primarily gossip rags. Movie posters had it all. They were glamorous, colorful, evocative...some were beautiful, and the best of them simultaneously caught my eye and fired up my imagination. Capturing the essence of a movie in a single image; revealing just enough, but not too much. They were part of the chain of anticipation that formed the whole moviegoing experience for me.

My profusely-postered bedroom of my first apartment
The Villa Elaine Apartments on Vine St in Hollywood -1980

It was during my freshman high school year that I made the “How long has this been going on?” discovery of there actually being stores (one store to be exact, a tiny shop tucked away in SF’s Castro/Mission District) which sell genuine, bonafide, National Screen Service movie posters to us lowly civilians. Who knew? Looking back, it surprises me to think how, during all my time spent newspaper scrapbooking and gazing longingly at theater display cases, I hadn’t allowed myself to even entertain the possibility of such a thing.
The first day I visited the store I easily spent more than an hour there - the veritable kid in a candy store - leaving with my very first authentic movie posture purchase: an original 1968 Barbarella one-sheet. This kicked off a near-lifelong collecting hobby which lasted until the mid-90s (when movie posters entered that dismal, artless stage of excessively airbrushed big celebrity heads).

I've since sold off or donated all but the most favored posters in my collection, the top tier examples I'll cite below. This list of favorite movie posters is limited to those which are still in my possession adhere to no particular criteria beyond my own personal tastes, aesthetics, and sentimental attachment. Omissions (of which there are bound to be many) don't signify a lack of quality, more than likely just a lower position on a much longer list.

(click on any image to see full size)

MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE MOVIE POSTERS

Rosemary's Baby- 1968 
One of the classiest poster's I've ever seen, as far as I'm concerned, the gold-standard in poster design. 

Stephen O. Frankfurt and Phil Gips are the New York admen responsible for the poster and ad campaign created for Rosemary’s Baby. A pivotal work not only in its artistic and commercial innovation but because it was also the first motion picture assignment for the two veteran advertising men who would go on to collaborate on more than 150 film campaigns over three decades of motion picture advertising.
Treating the film as they would any other account, they assembled a team of Madison Avenue ad artists, photographers (George Eliot-he photographed the baby carriage on one of the mounts in Central Park) and copy writers (Steve Gordon is widely credited with coming up with the tagline "Pray for Rosemary's Baby") to assist them in devising a suitable campaign. The image of Mia Farrow is credited to production still photographer Bob Willoughby.

I had the opportunity to interview these two industry giants back in 2005 (separately, they weren't on the best terms by then), both proud of what they achieved and aware of its influence on movie poster design.
In discussing  the idea behind Rosemary's Baby's initial concept, Gips explained, “What we were trying to do with Rosemary’s Baby was create a sophisticated ad.  A sophisticated ad conveys a mood or idea without providing too much information, while busy, or “schmear” ads, as they are sometimes referred to, appeal to the senses or emotions and often tell too much or try to show too much.  We set out to create an ad that appealed to the imagination.” 

The Day of the Locust - 1975
This advance poster hangs above my writing desk. The work of illustrator David Edward Byrd, this poster is drama with a capital "D." Totemic Hollywood symbols (palm trees, movie marquee with period lettering, klieg lights piercing the purple darkness) direct the eye to a super-sized, hyper-glam Karen Black, oblivious to the nightmarish chaos below her. It's an image that manages to capture the feel and thrust of the film in a single unforgettable image.

Barbarella - 1968

Artwork by Robert McGinnis, this Barbarella poster has always appealed to me because of its very period look and its evocation of a comic book. The heroic image of  a very leggy image of Fonda with her mane of hair flying in the space-wind is too cool for school. I love the space-age lettering font and most of all I love the tagline "See Barbarella Do Her Thing!"  which, after nearly 50 years, still brings a smile to my face. 

The Fox - 1967
The aesthetics of this poster and my fondness for it betrays my '60s-sympathetic sensibilities. The work of poster designer Bill Gold, This kind of sensuous, pseudo-psychdelic imagery was all the rage in the 60s, so the simple yet bold graphic got me from the start. As a kid I loved the clever way the figures of woman/man/woman/fox were so blended; today I really appreciate the visual economy.

Shampoo - 1975
If any one thing can be cited as to being the reason I fell so hard for this poster in '75, I'd say the reason was sexual effrontery. The aforementioned "big celebrity heads" wave in movie poster design was still a couple of decades off, so it wasn't particularly common to see such achingly gorgeous faces staring out at one from a movie poster. Indeed, the directness of the gazes (and warm brown tones of the photography) is brazenly sexy, hip, and stylish at the same time. This is a poster so sure of itself, it doesn't have to DO anything. Goldie Hawn never looked better, but I have to admit when the film first came out and I saw the poster, I didn't recognize Julie Christie at all. I actually thought they left Christie off and put Carrie Fisher front and center.

The Getaway - 1972
I'm not sure who designed this poster, but it with its use of a simple, dynamic image coupled with the mnemonic pairing of the last names of its stars, it feels like the work of Frankfurt/Gips. in any event, I loved the poster the moment I saw it. It's like someone asked for a single image that read "tough" and the designer miraculously complied.

Bonnie & Clyde - 1967
This iconic poster is another Bill Gold poster design. In my essay on this film, I related how this poster's graphic was quite unsettling for me as a child. Now it hangs above my bed. It still stands as a provocatively commanding image - violence and laughter juxtaposed - but these days I think I've come to better appreciate its gracefulness.

Just Tell Me What You Want - 1980
When I moved to Los Angeles, three of the strongest impressions the women here made on me were: berets, white wine, and slit skirts. The popularity of the latter comes to mind whenever I look at this smile-inducing poster featuring a exquisitely long-limbed Ali MacGraw pulling a Gladys Ormphby on comedian Alan King. Though this poster may look like your typical rom-com style ad, what gave it its kick in 1980 was how it played against Ali MacGraw's somewhat stiff image. She was more more animated in this still photo than she'd ever been onscreen.

Images -1972
The poster for this psychological thriller grabbed me with its simple directness (why is that camera pointed at ME, yet reflecting Susannah York in the lens?),  ambiguity (Why are there two Susannah Yorks in that lens?), and suggestion of violence. Kind of a perfect way to create curiosity and interest without revealing anything.

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? - 1969
If capturing attention and keeping it is the goal of a movie poster, small wonder this striking yet agonized study in anguish still hangs on my walls. I think this might have been the third poster I ever purchased...right after Rosemary's Baby.

Reflections in a Golden Eye - 1967
If there's any kind of pattern to emerge in the kind of posters I gravitate toward, I guess I have to cop to being a sucker for its negative space when its used to draw your eye to a strong image. Here we come dangerously close to the "big celebrity head" thing, but that riding crop and the dissimilar countenances of the stars (stern/seductive) really makes this late acquisition (I purchased it in 1990) a hard-to-find fave.

Saturday Night Fever - 1977
This poster has the distinction of being the only one in my collection representing a film I largely despise. I really can't stand Saturday Night Fever for any number of reasons (although I do enjoy it when I can see only the dancing clips), but the poster is really something else. I have a sentimental attachment to it because it recalls my disco-crazy days (yes, I had a T-shirt with those exact words blazoned across it), and because I still can recall how excited I was by this now rather silly-looking poster when I first saw it.
There's a reason why so many things about this poster have become cliche and the stuff of parody, but I feel lucky to have my memories of that brief moment in time when everything you see here - from the white suit to the disco-lit floor) was part of a exhilarating wave of change.
Today, what has become the most striking aspect of this poster is its total lack of irony.

 These posters round out my Top 20 - Winners all! 

LEAST FAVORITE MOVIE POSTER 

What's The Matter With Helen? -1971
"I know...let's get people interested in our film by showing them how it ends!"

My problem with this poster has nothing to do with graphic design and all to do with it not giving a hoot about the film-goer's experience. Rather than invest the time and energy to find out how to sell a hagsploitation horror film with a period setting, the poster goes for the hard sell: it shows us a violent moment from the film that also just happens to be the movie's  "shock" twist ending. WTF?!
It was like the studio had no confidence in the film, and rather than take a chance on it being presumed to be a comedy or musical (given its cast) it just went the dumbded-down route and  laid it all out there. The worst!


If any of you out there have a particular favorite movie poster, have ever wanted to own or collect them, or been persuaded to see a film because of one, please share it with us.

No discussion of movie posters would be complete without at least a tip of the hat to Saul Bass
The great granddaddy of motion picture graphic design 

Copyright © Ken Anderson